


(I'm) Stuck On Your Amber Lips

by editingatwork



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, M/M, flower shop worker Alexei, tater is thirsty, tattoo artist Kent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 09:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8280787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editingatwork/pseuds/editingatwork
Summary: Hot tattoo artists with lip rings and bedhead render Alexei physically incapable of English. Or any speech at all.





	

The bell over the door chimes. Alexei turns away from a display of geraniums to greet the customer, and promptly forgets English.

“Yo, Snowy, you in?” calls the customer. He’s in a faded black tank-top and dark wash denim jeans, with a flannel tied ‘round his waist and his blonde hair a mess. He’s tan and muscled and hot in a 90s grunge kind of way. And he’s just completely  _covered_  in tattoos. There’s what looks like a stylized python curling around the entire length of his left arm. His right is an unfinished sleeve full of soft colors and hard lines.

Grey eyes fall on Alexei. “Oh, hey. You’re not Snowy.”

Alexei shakes his head.

“Is he in?”

Alexei shakes his head again. Distantly it registers that he has a pot of flowers in his hands. The customer cocks his head at Alexei’s silence. Alexei wonders what his face is doing right now.

“Um. Okay. Well, I’m from the tattoo studio across the street.” He points back over his shoulder. “Snowy’s my bro. I asked if I could come in and sketch the flowers for practice, and he said sure. Well, actually,” the guy amends, “he said I was welcome to park my ass over here when-the-fuck-ever as long as I didn’t get in the goddamn way during business hours.”

That sounds exactly like Snowy. Alexei blinks when the customer holds up a sketchbook. “So, I know he’s not around, but is it cool if I park my ass and sketch?”

Alexei nods.

“Sweet,” the customer says, and gives him a smile and a wink that almost makes Alexei drop the geranium. Then he wanders off to inspect the foliage and find something inspiring.

Alexei hurries into the back of the shop with the pot clutched in his hands.

\--

The second time the customer shows up, Alexei is nearly at the end of his shift and Snowy is there. Alexei is carefully wrestling a rose bush into a new pot and doesn’t look up when the bell dings. Behind him, Snowy says, “Hey, Parser,” and a familiar voice responds, “Yo, Snow.”

“Don’t fu--don’t rhyme my name,” Snowy replies, catching himself short of an f-bomb. There’s a grandma and her granddaughter five feet away checking out the lilies for a baby shower. Alexei finishes with the rosebush and wipes his hands on a towel.

“I’m gonna just lurk in the corner, if that’s cool?” asks the customer. Alexei still hasn’t turned around because he’s tired from being on his feet all day and can’t handle that much gorgeously inked skin right now without compromising his dignity.

“Oi, Tater! You met Parson? Tater!”

Alexei turns around. The customer--Parson--is in a white t-shirt that isn’t thick enough to hide how much ink is lurking on his shoulders and chest. There’s ink peeking through the rips in his jeans, too, and a silver ring in his lip. His hair looks like he either just rolled out of bed or got fucked within an inch of his life in a broom closet.

Even though Alexei’s thick smock is going to hide the tenting in his pants, he kind of wants to die.

Parson says to Snowy, “Yeah, we met. I came in two days ago, you weren’t here.” Then he looks straight at Alexei and quirks a blond eyebrow. “Didn’t get a name, though.”

They’re both looking at him expectantly. Well, Parson is looking expectant; Snowy is getting a weird, scrunched look on his face the longer Alexei says exactly nothing.

“Tater, man, you in there?”

“Yes,” Alexei finally says, thank  _fuck_ , his voice works again. “I’m Tater.”

“Kent Parson.” He comes up and holds out his hand. He’s shorter up close. Alexei thinks he could probably pick Kent up and fuck him against a wall if he put his mind to it. Kent keeps talking. “Is ‘Tater’ the name your momma gave you, or do you have another one?”

Alexei shakes Kent’s hand. He might be blushing. “Um. Alexei. Mashkov. Alexei Mashkov. Is my name.”

Snowy is barely concealing a shit-eating grin. Alexei knows he’s in for it when Kent is gone.

“Cool. Nice to meet you. Again.” Kent smiles and Alexei nods. When they let go--God, Kent’s fingers are strong, Alexei wonders what they’d feel like pulling on his hair--Kent says to Snowy, “Bro, you got any trees I can draw?”

Snowy points out a side door. “Out in the greenhouse. And don’t touch the saplings this time, ass--Kent.”

“Ass-Kent. Fail.”

“Get out of my shop.”

Kent salutes him, waves to Alexei with a cheery, “See you ‘round, Tater!” and leaves.

Snowy’s smug look is a thing of nightmares.

“Shut up,” Alexei mutters. He goes to the counter to organize their business cards.

Snowy joins him. “Dude, that was pathetic. You are  _so fucking gay_ ,” he says, just as the grandma and granddaughter approach them at the counter.

Alexei covers his mouth. “Snowy! We have customer!”

“Oh, don’t mind us,” says the grandma, reaching for the order forms they keep next to the register. “My grandson does drag at a cabaret in Vegas and recently married a Chippendale. They’re quite happy.”

Alexei laughs, because he’s never in his life seen Snowy as speechless as he is now.

\--

Alexei is not in the shop the next time Kent comes around. Snowy, however, tells him about it in detail, leering all the while, until Alexei checks to make sure the shop’s empty and then throws a gardening glove at him.

“I don’t know if Parser’s gay,” Snowy tells him after he’s stopped being an ass. “Or like, any other flavor of queer. I’ve only known him a year, since he started working at the studio. He did some ink for me, did I tell you?”

“No,” Alexei replies, intrigued. “Where?”

Snowy pulls up his shirt and turns around so Alexei can see the little inscription of “Sarah” in black cursive, with five little ladybugs perched on the letters or flying around them. Snowy drops his shirt. “It’s for my sister. She died a couple years ago. Cancer. She liked ladybugs a whole lot. There’s five ‘cause we were five years apart.”

Alexei nods. The tattoo is simple but the artwork superb, and even with such small elements as the ladybugs, the detailing shows mastery. “I’m sorry. Tattoo is beautiful.”

“Thanks.” Snowy smiles in a way that’s pleased and a little embarrassed. “Parser helped me with the design. He’s good with that art shit.” His smile takes on a sly edge. “You should get him to show you his sketchbook sometime. He’s really good, he’ll blow your socks off. Although, I know you want him to blow other parts of you too--”

Alexei grabs the other gardening glove and smacks him with it.

\--

The next day, Kent Parson is already in the shop when Alexei arrives. He’s not in the front but back in the greenhouse, and so Alexei doesn’t see him until he comes out of the employee’s break room and heads for the succulents. Kent’s squatting in a corner in a way that looks uncomfortable. He’s got his sketchbook balanced on one arm and is drawing with the opposite hand, holding a second pencil in his mouth. He’s wearing an expression of intent concentration on the cactus in front of him.

There are other customers in the shop and other employees working. It’s enough white noise that Kent doesn’t seem to differentiate Alexei’s footsteps from the rest when he walks up behind him.

Although Alexei knows he probably shouldn’t, he cranes his neck to look at Kent’s sketchpad. The cactus drawing is the main feature, but all around it are half-finished sketches of parts of other cacti: sharp spines and long arms and fluffy flowers. Alexei is awed by the effortless realism of each image, no matter how unfinished.

Kent shifts his feet absentmindedly and almost topples over. Alexei doesn’t think; he jumps forward and grabs Kent by the shoulders, holding him upright.

“Shit! ..Oh.” Kent tips his head back to look up at Alexei. His pretty mouth splits in a grin. “Thanks, Tater.”

“You are welcome,” Alexei replies, so goddamn stiff and mechanical it probably sounds like the only English he knows.

Kent just smiles more and leans back against Alexei’s legs, since Alexei’s standing right behind. “Shit, you’re built like a tree. You wanna stand there and keep me up ‘til I finish this bit? It’ll just be another minute.”

The shop is busy. Alexei has work to do. “Okay,” he says, because Kent’s back is warm and solid and when he puts his head back down to finish his sketch, Alexei can imagine trailing kisses all up Kent’s spine. Kent got a haircut recently and his neck is bare. Alexei can see a vine tattoo curling out of his low shirt collar and finishing at his nape.  _That,_ Alexei wants to bite.

Kent’s ability to estimate time is shit. It’s five minutes before he snaps his sketchbook shut and stands. “Thanks for keeping me steady,” he says.

"Sure,” Alexei says, and wills himself to say something else--literally  _anything else, Mashkov_ \--but his eyes land on the ring in Kent’s lip and the dimple on his jaw and he physically can’t.

Kent claps him on the arm. “See you ‘round, Tater.”

“See you.”

Kent leaves. Alexei wants to scream.

\--

“I will  _pay you_  to let me tell him you’re thirsty for him,” Snowy says two weeks later when Kent has come in five times and Alexei has said fuckall. “I will give you fifty bucks to let me go over there right now and tell him you wanna bang him in our break room. I will invite him out for coffee  _for you_  if it’ll get you to stop staring at his ass every time he comes in here and then  _sighing fucking dramatically_  when he leaves.”

Alexei glares. “I am work on it.”

“I’m gonna tell Chakira to switch shifts with me. I need a motherfucking break.”

\--

Kent is wearing eyeliner and another t-shirt that fits him like a second skin, plus the most  _glorious_  pair of ass-hugging jeans. But the day has been slow, Snowy’s not here, and Alexei Mashkov is going to do it. He’s going to go up to Kent Parson. He’s going to go up to Kent Parson, and he’s going to fucking talk.

“Hello,” Alexei says.

Kent is in the greenhouse again. If anyone else had dragged one of the chairs from their garden furniture display halfway across the room just to sit on it and sketch English Ivy, Alexei would have kindly asked them to put it back. But this is Kent, and Kent’s sucking on the lip ring when Alexei walks up and Alexei will give him a pass on pretty much anything.

Kent’s pencil pauses over the line he’s drawing and he looks up. “Hey,” he says. “Tater, my man. What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Alexei points to the sketch. “It’s good.”

“Thanks.” Kent beams. “Although I should thank you guys here in the shop, for letting me come in all the time and get in your way.”

“You not in the way. Why flowers?”

Kent points at the paper. “Why am I drawing them, you mean?”

“Yes. And ivy, and cacti. Is for design?” He gestures to his own arm and Kent glances down at his unfinished tattoo sleeve. Much of what’s on it is nature-themed, and it has several flowers.

“No, not this. This isn’t even all my work.”

“No?”

“Nope. See, look here.” Kent stands, puts the sketchpad on the chair, and turns so his arm’s right in front of Alexei when he holds it out. Kent starts at his wrist. “The morning glories here? My friend Todd did that. It’s some of the first color work he ever did. Kid’s a goddamn genius, it’s amazing. The sunset shading behind it is by the manager at my old place.” The colors behind the flowers are burnished gold. They fade through pink, purple, and finally a deep blue, all of it transparent and soft like spilled watercolors. Thin, gnarled branches emerge from the color to twist their way up Kent’s upper arm and finish at his shoulder. “The tree branches are just an outline so far, and if you look here you can see a dragonfly.”

The insect’s body and wings are drawn so delicately that Alexei feels like the slightest flex of Kent’s muscles might break the lines. He’s reaching to touch it before he thinks better of it, and stops himself short.

“I don’t mind,” Kent says. Alexei traces his finger over the dragonfly’s body. “That one I drew myself, but the guys at the studio are helping me ink it.” Alexei doesn’t know if he’s imagining the breathy quality to Kent’s voice, or if that flush was in his cheeks a moment ago. He meets Kent’s eyes and feels a sizzle like lighting run down his spine.

Alexei drops his fingers from Kent’s skin and swallows. “Coffee,” he blurts. He wants to smack himself in the face.

“Coffee?”

“Are you. Like?” The English language has utterly deserted him.

Kent laughs. “Yeah, I like coffee.”

“Do you want have? With me.” Somewhere in Russia, his university English communication professor is getting a migraine and doesn’t know why. Not that Alexei would be doing much better in his fluent Russian. Cute boys fuck his ability to communicate all to hell.

God is with Alexei today, though, because Kent is grinning like he’s won the lottery. “Just to make sure I’m getting this correctly, are you asking me out on a date?”

“Yes,” Alexei replies emphatically. “If is okay.”

Kent’s blush heats up his cheeks even though he’s still grinning. “Let me show you something.” He grabs his sketchbook and flips to the bottom page. Alexei had thought the sketchbook was barely used, but it seems that Kent has been drawing from back-to-front as well as front-to-back. The pages start out with unfinished studies of random animals and people.

But then Alexei’s eyes go wide when he sees a sketch of himself.

Then another, and another, and another. Some are fast and gritty, some careful and smooth; some full-body, others only torso or face or legs. There are a lot of sketches of his hands.

And his ass.

Alexei thinks back to Snowy’s comment about getting a look at Kent’s sketchbook. The fucker  _knew_.

Kent snaps the book shut. “So, yeah. The interest is, uh, extremely mutual.”

“I’m kill Snowy,” Alexei declares. “I’m go on date, and then I’m kill Snowy.”

“Coffee and a murder. I’m game.” Kent’s still hot, still wearing a tight shirt and ass-hugging jeans and flicking his lip-ring with his tongue in a way that is making Alexei crazy, but the way he’s shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking on his feet makes him look like a kid who’s going to Disneyland. It makes him less intimidating. It makes him into someone Alexei can talk to.

“Why you not say before?” Alexei asks, and clarifies, “That you interested in me,” when Kent looks confused.

“Oh. Well, ah.” Kent’s laugh is no less lovely for being awkward and embarrassed as hell. He waves a hand in Alexei’s direction. “You’re really, you know. Fucking... hot as shit. Big goddamn hands and arms and your ass and--Anyway, I kept meaning to make a move and then chickening out.”

Alexei looks at his hands. “You like my hands?” He glances at Kent, who’s sucking on the lip ring so hard it’s making his mouth red. Feeling bold, he raises a very deliberate eyebrow. “Why you like my hands, Kent?”

Kent lets the lip ring go. His mouth is red and wet. “Honestly? I get hot thinking about you picking me up and fucking me against the nearest wall.”

Alexei looks back over his shoulder towards the breakroom, then back to Kent. Kent's eyes are going big and dark, like he knows what Alexei’s thinking.

Alexei tells him anyway. “I want to try.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> cry with me in rarepair hell on [tumblr](http://punmasterkentparson.tumblr.com/).


End file.
